Work Text:
you're afraid, at the beginning. you always are. maybe it's the unfamiliarity, maybe it's the the way you can't run from the truth anymore, that this reality is yours now, regardless - you are afraid.
and then the fangs of familiarity begin to sink in, hours that would've passed punitively now wash over you like a gentle river, the press of a piano key is no longer a sledge hammer to your brain, and you naively hope that soon it can return to its sweet whisper.
you learn to let go of hope.
a little bit of bitter to bring out the sweet, harry would say whenever the singing of a piano became all too much. you want to be angry at his comments, at the way he pretends to understand when he could never begin to imagine what was taken from you, but it's harry, and the sun dances over the rims of his glasses where he leans over to take the leaver out of your clenched grip, and your heart spasm with your knuckles when the tool is handed over.
just this, you learn to beg, just let me have this. you understand that you do not belong in this world anymore, but would it be so bad to linger? are you not allowed to stand by entries, to dither at the before and the after?
maybe that's your first mistake, or maybe you shouldn't have touched a damned piano in the first place. if your head hadn't been filled with all these dreams, you wouldn't have to suffer so much.
but you're too attached, too weak, to walk away from everything you ever knew. everything you ever were.
it is what makes uri so enticing. you could lie and say it was all about the money, about harry's bills, but a lie rings out like an out of tune key, and yours sound particularly ugly.
you have - had - something that made you useful, that made you exist, and you wanted it, god did you want it. you wanted it all, the proximity to your old life, the thrill of your new one, ruthie's sweet smiles and daring symphonies, and harry and marla and even the money.
now you have nothing, but a new beginning and this familiar fear.